Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Evolution is not Intentional

I just picked up the book The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart. Something in my subconscious was trying to get my attention about the word intention.

I just figured it out. One of the ways people talk about evolution is as if it were intentional. For example, fish evolved lungs so they could breathe air on land, or birds evolved wings so that they could fly.

But evolution is not intentional. The way we currently understand it, variation happens randomly, without intention. Then, natural selection sorts out the improvements from the maladaptive changes. Creatures born with particular variations which enhance their ability to survive do a better job of passing on genes with those variations to their offspring than other creatures without those variations .

No comments: